


neptune burns

by honeysugarchocolate



Series: there is water in the sun [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: A little heavy on the poetry, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst and Tragedy, Art Student Lee Donghyuck | Haechan, Character Death, Closure, Declarations Of Love, Heartbreak, Hockey Player Mark Lee (NCT), Implied Sexual Content, Kissing at Midnight, Like disgustingly so, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mark Lee (NCT) is Whipped, Minor Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno, Non-Graphic Violence, Peaceful Death, Sad Mark Lee (NCT), Slow Dancing, Subways, This one is sad bois ngl, Time Loop, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, soft boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23350288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeysugarchocolate/pseuds/honeysugarchocolate
Summary: Mark thinks perhaps he was meant to save Donghyuck. Perhaps this isn't just some teenage thing. Perhaps this isn't a mirage; his entire being on the palms of Donghyuck's hands.Or; donghyuck dies like a hundred times and with each time mark saves him he withers, with him, within.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Series: there is water in the sun [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677892
Comments: 14
Kudos: 50





	neptune burns

It's sluggish at first; falling in love with Donghyuck. 

Mark picks up the pen a kid in the subway queue dropped and hands it back, everything's too bright and pristine, a rupture of tangled nerves at the lowest tunnel that connects Mark to the cherry pit of the world, and that's when he meets Donghyuck for the first time. 

The boy smiles, pale sunbeams in his lashes, the day's first breath between his lips. "Gee, thanks you're a life saver! This pen's my favorite." 

And perhaps it's due to the messy haze of cigarette smoke from somewhere behind them that puts everything out of focus; the coffee cup in Mark's hand, the moist floor, the frayed and tarred edges of the notebook the boy's holding close to his chest; it slows everything down, dulls all of the shines into glows and all of the corners into curves— but Mark feels like he's always been homesick for this boy he's never even met. 

He's beautiful, Mark thinks, especially when he gets hair in his eyes, when he stares at the floor, when his cheeks flush red like summer nights' fruitpunch and when he bites his lip whenever he looks Mark in the eye. He introduces himself as Donghyuck, an art major, and asks Mark for his number.

"I'll give you a call sometime," he says, "We can go drink something much better than that hot bean water of yours." Then he laughs and his face comes alive in the shades of daybreak, and just like that he's embedded himself into Mark's arteries, coursing like poetry in his bloodstream. 

Donghyuck calls him one night, idyllic and slow like a foaming chloric dream, and tells him, "Let's go on an adventure, Mark Lee." as if he knew Mark was thinking of him, chewing on his eraser and his own bones instead of writing his assignment. 

Donghyuck wraps his hands around Mark's neck —the prettiest silk ribbons— and drags him out of his room and they ride their bikes around the city at 12 AM; liquid midnight shadows, like twin crows. There are trappings of light in Donghyuck's eyes as if he is a black hole; a creation in reverse, and it sucks Mark in for what it is. At some point Donghyuck starts singing as the wind breathes sparks in his hair, and his voice is so soft, like soda bubbles popping on Mark's tongue, like the sun sleeping on his skin, the silky shift of time before he falls asleep. He's illuminating, butane blue, by the streetlights overhead and the tone of his voice travels through Mark's body, guiding it into corners and curves and Mark thinks he's the most beautiful boy, the most beautiful artist who ever sang to the frostbitten moon. 

Donghyuck sits on his lab at 2 AM, basking lazily in the park, surrounded by dahlias and dandelions and dunked in moonlight. They talk about nothing and everything in hushed voices as if afraid the moon would listen in; Donghyuck tells him about his favourite season, his favourite planet and his favourite painting. "Dogs Playing Poker by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge," he says and he's got a smile on his lips, incisors high up in the sky, rattling the stars. "All eighteen of them." 

"Don't get me wrong. Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône, Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory— they're all beauties but could you _imagine_ what Coolidge had to do to capture these scenes," Donghyuck drones softly, tucking flowers behind Mark's ear and mapping out the veins in his arms, like he's letting them guide him back home. 

"He must've practiced for years to master his Saint Bernard disguise and observe these dogs— the many activities they pursue when humans are not around. Probably lost one too many poker games just to gain their trust and camaraderie— not only that but he had to train himself to paint with prosthetic paws. He probably gained access to Houndopolis, the secret dog city where all the underground dog activities took place, and got to see them dine and dance and play billiards, he even witnessed their basketball games and court trials and immortalized it all on canvas. And I think it's really, really hard for any artist to beat _that_."

For a moment silence presses ever inwards like smoke on a voyager but then, "Your face!" Donghyuck booms like an orchestra drum and erupts into laughter before Mark himself. And when he falls into Mark, clinking their foreheads together like two ice cubes bumping hips in a champagne glass, everything flies out of sync, Mark's breath drips into the cracks between his vertebrae, his heart clenches on itself; a small death, self-administered. Piano air runs fingers through Donghyuck's hair, moonlight glitters on his cinnamon skin and he asks Mark about his favourite song, foreheads still pressed close, veins and soft tissues imploding gently second by second; an erosion process. 

"Frank Ocean," Mark breathes out, he's got jugs of pink water for lungs and eyes on Donghyuck's mouth. "Absolutely _anything_ by Frank Ocean."

"My favourite song," Donghyuck tells him, the words sprouting from his lips like lilacs, so delicate they crush Mark under their weight, "Sounds a lot like your name." 

A constellation is left unstrung within Mark's veins, and he splits his cheeks when he kisses the angel boy, holds onto him, cracks his chest open like pill bottles for him. His skin melts with Donghyuck's, their tongues mottle love letters inside each other's mouths and he doesn't have a care in the world because love feels like this. 

Mark thinks love feels like this. 

And then before Mark's really gotten a chance to understand it, to let it paint the grooves and crevices under his skin, to fully love this boy who reminds of summer rain, the warm cherry pies his mother made on Sundays and Lucky Charms under a fresh white linen morning— Donghyuck's caught in a gruesome car accident while rushing to his morning classes and Mark's sitting outside the OR, wishing that he just had a little more time with him, that he could've known Lee Donghyuck just a little better. 

Donghyuck is dead but Mark still feels him in the drowsy soft sunlight that peers through the window, he feels him in the cracks of his hands when he sinks his face into them, crying reds and bleeding blues and choking on black tars like his world has ended. And maybe it did. 

But the next thing he knows, he's back in time, in the queue again, and there's a pen on the ground that he can choose to pick up. And he does, he picks it up, taps Donghyuck on the shoulder, and Donghyuck turns, smiling like the sun rises in his veins just for him, meets him for the first time again, and they fall in love, just as easily, a whole lot faster and maybe a little deeper. 

Except this time Mark pulls Donghyuck by the waist and kisses him until both of their knees feel like fun house mirrors, weak and warped, and begs him to stay the night— he's inside Donghyuck like needle through fabric, he sews him like a textile and then unstitches him all over again at the end. He makes it so that Donghyuck isn't riding the car that will kill him and holds onto hope with teeth and nails. 

When Mark calls Donghyuck after his afternoon class and Donghyuck answers, half-awake and half drawling, voice soft and dreamlike— dulcet through the telephone, "Am I in trouble?", and Mark feels his heart stuttering and stammering and stumbling in his chest, feels the cold sweat like ashes on the creases of his back and between his shoulder blades, he realizes that perhaps he's loved Donghyuck more than he thought.

That night, they dance in Mark's room, with the blue of twilight around them like a cloak and the broken light bulb sky burning outside. Calloused fingertips like wide plateaus, twanging strings, heartstrings plucked. Donghyuck's eyes are closed, mouth open, singing, not talking, but they're still having a conversation. And Mark doesn't notice and neither does Donghyuck because they're young and alone in their own secret reflective world. Donghyuck has two left feet and he dances like he's hanging by his toes, like fruit bats and jungle gym monkey kids, Mark's rough hands dwarfing his. 

They dance to the tune of cicadas' buzz and Donghyuck sings along, gentle falsetto. Mark's growing, learning, glowing within his own skin; two rosebud boys blooming. They dance so much, the cough syrup deep blue night enfolding their revelry. And when Donghyuck says, "You know, I love you." Mark thinks he can taste woozy youth on his skin. 

He thinks perhaps he was meant to save Donghyuck. Perhaps this isn't just some teenage thing. Perhaps this isn't a mirage; his entire being on the palms of Donghyuck's hands. 

But two days later Donghyuck walks down the wrong alley and gets himself stabbed over a wallet and he's dead, again, by the time the ambulance arrives; he's long gone by the time Mark's notified. The wallet is later given to Mark and he finds himself staring at a picture of the two of them smiling so wide libra reflects off their teeth that Donghyuck kept, the sunflowers that twist into knots around his ribs at the sight of Donghyuck's smile wilt and fall, until he's all tied up and suffocating. Something inside him breaks and spins and shifts like tectonic plates— he squeezes his eyes shut. 

And when he wakes up again in that queue with the pen on the ground before him, his heart revolves and revolves, spinning like weather forecasts. 

He's so shaken up from that crushing panic of listening to the empty dial tone that ashen sunday morning; gnashing teeth chipping. That jolt of fear when Donghyuck's face flashed over the news; a heart beating too quickly til it pierces. That cold, numb sadness watching Donghyuck's body go into the furnance; leaving him flossing out his flesh in the sink. He remembers the anxiety, like a one night stand, abrupt, at times tasteless, other times palpable in its saccharine powder— unfamiliar hands scurrying around his skin, trying to dig him, _pick him_ , meat from bone. And he hesitates.

So Mark stands there for a good second, turmoil hiding in his body, waiting, thinking if he should, if it'll be worth it, falling into the same mistake again, painting his insides blue so he only aches with sadness, but before he knows it he's already handing the pen back to Donghyuck. And then the question is answered in full when he looks up and sees Donghyuck beaming up at him, pruning Mark's heartstrings like an eager florist, pulling off his earbuds, looking a bit shy, a bit silly, and so devastatingly beautiful as he tells Mark, "Gee, thanks you're a life saver! This pen's my favorite." 

And Mark thinks, trying to keep his guts from spilling like baskets of rotten fruit, forcing his mouth up into some semblance of a smile, _God dammit, I know, you've told me three times already, you jerk_. And he doesn't want it nor does he plan to but he saves Donghyuck again from the car that kills him and from that dark alley and bank robbery that will kill him next— because that's just what you do when you're in love. You'll save someone who's destined to die anyway, because love makes you stupid, love makes you blind, love makes you think you can make a difference. Love calls your heart home and walks in without warning and plagues you for eternity, and even when it's gone you'll come running back to it again because it's both your rebirth and death. 

This time Donghyuck takes Mark to an art gallery. Mark feels like he's swallowed ten comets, a meteor and an asteroid, and yet he still can't burn as bright as Donghyuck. They walk slow like they're in love and they look at art, well, Donghyuck looks at art but Mark watches him instead. He takes a kitchen knife to his strawberry heart and just, watches Donghyuck. 

"You can stare later, Mark. We're here to admire art," Donghyuck muses with a small smile, eyes never leaving the painting. His voice is smooth and creamy, like the night drinking in the day's sunlight, like flowers withering to bones only visible under the moonlight. 

"Who says I'm not?" Mark replies, breathless and stupid, slightly falling out of gravity and maybe sinking into love like toes in quicksand as Donghyuck's cheeks bloom in the warmest blush. 

Time stops when Donghyuck interlocks their hands and the earth nearly slips its axis when he leans his head into Mark's shoulder. He watches art like it's moving like red reeds in the wind, swaying and salacious. And Mark watches him like he's watching their future, their colliding hips, their scrambled children— like one of those home video memories, dreamlike and faded, unreality.

They come home and spill what's in their chests like upturned fish bowls, licking the juice in each other's veins with desperation— Mark's tongue lapping up the sickeningly sweet sap from the hollow of Donghyuck's throat. The moonlight presses ghost kisses on Donghyuck's lips while Mark undoes him, his breathes strain against the pillow while Mark smiles down on his skin and traces his fingers over his thundering heart. He tells Donghyuck words that he promises never to say to another, words he would never utter if it isn't for the silence that rushes past when the dawn breaks and watches Mark take a bite from Donghyuck's candy-apple heart. And when Donghyuck tells him, "I don't want a life without you, I don't think I can live without you." Mark smiles, wide and cat-like, infuriating Donghyuck's skin with a flushed heat. 

They lay tangled up with each other, sleep drunk, sandy eyed, love hazed. Mark presses up against Donghyuck's spine, squeezing him tight, tight, tighter until the smell of his skin —pomegranate and sandalwood— mingles with Donghyuck's and wonders if somewhere out there, there are angels singing about it. 

So much love in the form of so many hockey games; the TV blaring cheers and shouts but the volume is always low and Donghyuck's lying on Mark's couch, head resting on Mark's lap, not sleeping, humming and singing softly, gentle falsetto. "I don't like watching hockey but I like the way you play when you're not really practicing," says Donghyuck, kissing Mark's neck and replacing what once lived in his ribcage with a taste of sun on his tongue. "Even if I could play like you —I _can't_ — I'd only hear what I love about you."

Mark's throat closes up and before he can say something, anything, Donghyuck wraps his thighs around his hips and kisses him with his laughter ridden lips— fingertips soft and cold like a river burnt blue against Mark's cheeks. And then Mark tells him what he thinks of his lips, his throat, his ribs, his holy hips and his golden thighs while Donghyuck's love-drunk and heat-struck by Mark's fingers ghosting over every span of his flesh, by Mark's eyes watching the way the moonlight kisses his most private skin. 

But then, of course, less than a week later Donghyuck trips down the stairs and Mark goes to his funeral, the same funeral, the same day, the same damned flowers on his coffin, in the same suit, feeling a thousand, a million times worse than the first time, feeling like the world has ripped a blackhole somewhere so deep in him. It rids his world of light, squashes him flat and spits him in another dimension where he can't even begin to understand the pain. He can almost hear it, Donghyuck's gentle falsetto, sometimes with Mark's guitar and sometimes singing along to a song on the radio and it hurts all the more, ties him up and slices him in half. 

So when he wakes up the next day, in the queue again, staring at the back of Donghyuck's silhouette, feeling like someone's holding an ice cube to his teeth, Mark's head buzzes like a wasp hive and he doesn't know anymore. It's odd, seeing Donghyuck before him, breathing, alive, looking as he did on that picture hanging over his coffin— a smile so sweet it burns Mark's throat and makes his molars rot. 

Donghyuck is a piece of sun, all creation grows towards him and Mark thinks he's no different. 

He thinks to himself, _It doesn't matter. I can't save him._ He thinks it as he taps Donghyuck on the shoulder and mouths to himself Donghyuck's words, the same words he'd heard a thousand times, the same words he carries in the spaces between his bones, "Gee, thanks you're a life saver!"

This time, he falls in love with Donghyuck, for the first time, for the second, the third, the fourth and the fifth. It fills up him like a bathtub full of glow flies, bathes him in kerosene and sets him ablaze and he begins to think that maybe it'll work out this time. Maybe there is some god out there who will see how much he loves Donghyuck, how hard he's praying for Donghyuck, and who'll let Donghyuck live, just once. Just one life. This time Mark keeps Donghyuck from the car, from the alley, from the bank, from the stairs. This time the beach becomes their favourite spot. The ocean like a purple coloring book as they walk together through the sand. Donghyuck's cheeks glow heat and warm red and he tells Mark he wants to run along, and he does, padding through wet sand like a homesick ghost. He chases the water and it chases him back, splashing and yipping at his legs like an eager puppy and Mark watches him from the shore. 

Eventually Mark relents and sits down with him at the mouth of the ocean, the foam hugs and steals the mud from their toes and tickles their ankles. They talk about everything and nothing all at once. Mark talks about shitty parties, about being up to his ankles in beer, about not knowing how to swim, about dry socks. And Donghyuck tells him, "We should get married in my booney ass town beneath a fig tree, with straw wrappers from Danny's Diner around our ring fingers." He laughs, youthful and carefree, the wind brushing his hair out of the way. "We'll ask the waiter for a pen so we can write our vows on the back of the receipt for three orders of shortcake— three 'cause one shortcake is never enough. My parents will probably wail as the car rockets off to our honeymoon, but you know what? I'll just be laughing 'cause we're never gonna give that pen back."

Mark kisses him then, hard, and he tastes like frosting. Like half way through the birthday party with muddy knees and the smell of kids playing tag and the chatter of parents drinking wine. Like home. Sweat pools at the back of Mark's leg when Donghyuck's tongue coaxes his mouth open while the water kisses their knees. And, with his stomach sloshing with lemonade and heat, Mark begins to thinks maybe his love is enough this time around. 

It's almost anticlimactic when a week later, Donghyuck's roommate, Jeno, calls asking him through sky-wrenching sobs to come down to the morgue to identify a body together. And _fuck_ , Mark thinks, staring down at the receiver, he can't do this anymore. He doesn't love Donghyuck enough to let a hammer swing at his heart until it bleeds white, to be broken this hard, this many times. It's not fair. Love can't be like this. He tells Jeno whose sniffles drip like molten lava through the telephone that it's going to be okay and thinks maybe he isn't the only one who's in love with Donghyuck. 

So when he wakes up again, in that old spot, he doesn't pick up the pen. He steers himself and walks off with a heart that doesn't belong to him. He doesn't meet Donghyuck. He doesn't know Donghyuck. They don't fall in love. They don't cross paths. Mark gets into college, plays professional hockey, sees Donghyuck on a billboard now and then, hears of Donghyuck getting married to Lee Jeno his boyfriend of six years, hears of Donghyuck's art galleries that attract people from all over the world, then hears of Donghyuck's death on the radio — _the beautiful always die young_ , some commentator says— and Mark falls quiet, for a second his insides cave in on themselves, but then he's back to his practice. 

He doesn't get married or have kids but he grows old in a bone-chilling sort of peace. And well into his nursing home days he dreams about that awkward, clumsy, rounded laugh, the grounding, perfect weight, that odd sense of warmth about Donghyuck, Donghyuck with his arms around him, Donghyuck walking in the snow with him, Donghyuck telling him about his day, Donghyuck kissing his cheek, Donghyuck waltzing with him, Donghyuck sleeping in his lap, Donghyuck crying at the movies, Donghyuck being stupid, Donghyuck being loud, Donghyuck being shy, Donghyuck, Donghyuck, just Donghyuck, only Donghyuck, and he wakes up, and then, he's there.

There is the pen. He could leave it there and he could have a normal life, maybe even a family, be happy, grow old in peace. Or he could pick it up, fall in love for a blink, and then reap enough pain to last him lifetimes, wedged like a million splinters in his heart. 

He stares at it, and thinks no matter how much he sucks on the wood it'll never be wet enough to feel. Then he walks away.

And then, Donghyuck's voice comes cutting through the snow, crystal clear and steel hard against Mark's eardrums and lungs, like a harmony sewn between his veins, "Hey, did you drop this train ticket?" 

And Mark turns and thinks, _fuck it_. 

"Yeah," he says, and maybe he does love Donghyuck this much, maybe Donghyuck is the reason why he keeps looping back, maybe he was born to love him and to fail him. Mark looks at Donghyuck and smiles, wide and cat-like, reaching out, "You got me. Thanks." And they meet again, like the sun and moon, locked in a gravitational war, bound to cross and bound to fall apart. 

This is the lifetime Mark kisses Donghyuck most fiercely, the lifetime he touches Donghyuck most gently, the one where he tries to memorize every rise and fall of Donghyuck's chest, maps out his heartstrings like driving the unlit road back home, reads every single one of of Donghyuck's favorite manga titles cover to cover, plays Donghyuck the guitar every morning, cooks Donghyuck his favorite meals, walks him to classes and stargazes with him, at him, as the ocean foam eats them up like magma. 

This is the one where he asks Donghyuck, the silk of their sheets rubbing against their skin, and their skin clinging together in the warm haze of three in the afternoon, "If I were to die, what would you do?" 

Donghyuck answers, without even batting an eye, like he's singing full-chested, belting out, _the fucking idiot_ , "I'd save you, of course." Mark stiffens because he's sure Donghyuck just doesn't get it, "But what if you can't?" 

And Donghyuck responds, stretching, curling around Mark and kissing his bare shoulder, "I'd try. I'd try and try and try." And their eyes meet and Mark's breath solidifies in his throat and it's like Donghyuck's boiling his heart alive. Donghyuck's just sitting there, talking, planting pomegranate seeds across Mark's chest and Mark's entire world is ending, on the cusp of its next rebirth, one word at a time, "Because I can't live without you." 

Mark ruffles Donghyuck's hair and there are tears welling up cold behind his eyes and he's laughing and crying and crying and crying, because Donghyuck brings sadness and cyanide to his bones, because Donghyuck is so god damned precious he wants to keep him under the roof of his ribs, because, "I hope you live forever, you brat, I hope you live and become so old all you want to do is die," and Donghyuck has no idea what to do so he just gathers Mark carefully in his arms and lets him blow his nose on his half of the blanket, trying one platitude after another, stroking Mark's hair and leaving stars on his wake. 

And when he says, "It's ok, I'm here for you, you'll be ok," Mark can only think, _that's not true, and you wouldn't even know_ —

When Mark stops crying Donghyuck coos at him teasingly and places ghost kisses on each one of his fingertips, eyes glistening, brimming and overflowing with an affection so sweet Mark drowns and drowns and drowns. "What I love most are your callused fingers," he murmurs against the curve of Mark's thumb, his eyelids hanging over his honeycomb eyes. "All those years of music engraved in the tips."

"Your gentle falsetto," Mark tells him and almost cries at all the love that shines on Donghyuck's face, like the northern star and sand buckets under the sun, "When you sing along or hum absently. 

He misses it so much; Donghyuck's gentle falsetto, like Saturday mornings and weekday nights and dancing to Coldplay and being young and loved and safe. 

And then, of course, as it has always been, Donghyuck is dead the next morning. Mark wakes up with Donghyuck dead in his arms, curled up into his shoulder, an arm draped around his waist. His lips are a deep, cold blue like that of neptune clouds, his skin is pale like summer moons and warm piano fingers and he looks so peaceful. 

Mark closes his eyes, buries his face in Donghyuck's hair and breathes in deep like he is to bleed underwater and never resurface again. And then he's standing in line behind Donghyuck again, in the dead cold of winter, waiting for the last train home, and he's got a pen in his hand and he remembers what Donghyuck had said. He looks at the pen, and then reaches out and taps Donghyuck on the shoulder, because he'd try for Donghyuck, too, he'd try even if he can't save him. He'd fall off the edge of earth in flakes, he'd pluck the moon like an apple from the sky and swallow it in halves, he'd eviscerate his insides and set his flesh ablaze, just for Donghyuck. 

But this time, before Donghyuck can thank him, before Donghyuck can even turn —because if Mark sees his face under the sun, warm creams and oranges, the color of spilled root beer or a scab healing over salmon pink and white flesh, he wouldn't be able to— Mark steps off the platform, dashes into the train tracks, between the frostbitten metal and screeching wheels, cloaked by the slow, mellow breaths of winter. 

When the train comes, when Donghyuck looks into its headlights, he realizes that this is the lifetime he was waiting for, where Donghyuck doesn't die, where Mark saves him, where all Mark has of Donghyuck is the scent of yellow and lavender hues, injected in his eyes so when the darkness finally devours him Donghyuck is all he sees. 

But this too is the lifetime where Mark would be nothing to Donghyuck except a stranger on the evening news, some college kid speculated to have jumped in front of the train probably due to final exams pressure, a blip on the national television, a suitcase full of sea shells and rusty guitar chords and Ursa Major that someone forgets on a train. Donghyuck's roommate, Jeno who's still secretly in love with him and the way the lightless sky caresses his glazed skin, would switch the channel and Donghyuck would say, "You know, that's the guy who'd handed me my pen back before he jumped. Weird, ainnit?"

And Jeno would laugh, bright and ringing like a golden bell and say, "Oh, maybe he owed you in your past life or something," and Donghyuck would laugh too and forget it ever happened. 

But this is fine, because this is the lifetime that does not hurt Mark, because this is the one where he loves Donghyuck and Donghyuck lives long enough to bear all of that love and let it sprout like lilies from the coils of his brain. All that love from all the times Donghyuck unraveled like a woolen string and Mark couldn't stitch him back to life. All the times Mark had gone to his funeral, liquid pain seeping through his skin in the form of nihilism and black milk. 

All the times Mark had looked at him, heart so full and heavy with love it nearly pushed through every crack between his ribs and realized that, "You're the reason why I was born."

**Author's Note:**

> and there it goes whew. lemme know what you think in the comments! if you agree that Mark did the right thing, if you wanna throw forks at me or if you simply just wanna cry over our candy perfume angel boy hyuck together
> 
> also hope y'all are staying home and being safe. wash your hands all the time pls ♡


End file.
